AP News in Brief at 5:58 a.m. EDT

FERGUSON, Mo. (AP) — Police used tear gas and smoke bombs to repel crowds who threw Molotov cocktails during another violent night on the streets of a St. Louis suburb in the wake of the shooting of the unarmed 18-year old Michael Brown.

Hours earlier, the police chief had said race relations were the top priority in the town, where a white police officer fatally shot the black teen. Authorities have vowed to reach across the racial, economic and generational divide in a community in search of answers.

In the streets of Ferguson, though, the polite dialogue heard at community forums and news conferences is nowhere to be found.

Instead, officers from multiple departments in riot gear and in military equipment have clashed nightly with protesters, who chant, "Hands up, don't shoot." Wednesday saw more tense confrontations and further volleys of tear gas from police — this time paired with smoke bombs in response to flaming projectiles and other objects lobbed from the crowd. Protesters faced heavily armed police who at times trained weapons on them from armored trucks.

Two reporters said they were detained by police for not clearing out quickly enough from a McDonald's where they were working, near the protests but away from the more volatile areas. The two, who work for The Washington Post and The Huffington Post, were released without any charges. Both say they were assaulted but not seriously hurt.

BAGHDAD (AP) — Clashes between Iraqi troops and Sunni militants west of Baghdad killed at least four children on Thursday as the United Nations announced its highest level of emergency for the Arab country's humanitarian crisis in the wake of the onslaught by the extremist Islamic State group.

Since their blitz offensive in June, the al-Qaida-breakaway group has overrun much of Iraq's north and west and driven out hundreds of thousands from their homes. The push has displaced members of the minority Christian and Yazidi religious communities and threatened Iraqi Kurds in the Kurdish autonomous region in the north.

The U.N. on Wednesday declared the situation in Iraq a "Level 3 Emergency" — a development that will trigger additional goods, funds and assets to respond to the needs of the displaced, said U.N. special representative Nickolay Mladenov, pointing to the "scale and complexity of the current humanitarian catastrophe."

The Security Council also said it was backing a newly nominated premier-designate in the hope that he can swiftly form an "inclusive government" that could counter the insurgent threat, which has plunged Iraq into its worst crisis since the U.S. troop withdrawal in 2011.

Tens of thousands of Yazidis fled the Islamic State group's advance to take refuge in the remote desert Sinjar mountain range.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration is grappling with how to bridge the gap between its increasingly dire assessment of the threat posed by the Islamic State group and the limited, defensive air campaign it has so far undertaken, which military officials acknowledge will not blunt the group's momentum.

For months, administration officials have been divided about the threat posed by the Islamic State as it seized parts of Syria and advanced on towns in Iraq. Now, amid new intelligence about its growing strength, a consensus is forming that the group presents an unacceptable terrorism risk to the United States and its allies.

At issue is whether President Barack Obama, elected on a platform of ending the Iraq war, will heed calls for a campaign to contain or destroy the Islamic State, an undertaking that could dominate U.S. foreign policy for the remainder of his term.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said the group poses "a threat to the civilized world," while Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., called the Islamic State a "terrorist army" that must be defeated. But Obama has not used similar language. He has authorized a limited campaign of targeted airstrikes designed to protect refugees and American personnel in the Kurdish region — but not take out the group's leadership or logistical hubs.

A strategy to destroy the Islamic State would not require large numbers of American ground troops, but it would amount to a significant escalation from the recent air operations, analysts say. It might also require military action in western Syria, where the group has its headquarters in the city of Ar-Raqqah.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Pope Francis called Thursday for renewed efforts to forge peace on the war-divided Korean Peninsula and for both sides to avoid "fruitless" criticisms and shows of force, opening a five-day visit to South Korea with a message of reconciliation as Seoul's rival, North Korea, fired five projectiles into the sea.

North Korea has a long history of making sure it is not forgotten during high-profile events in the South, and Thursday's apparent test firing off its eastern coast made its presence felt.

In the first speech of his first trip to Asia, Francis told South Korean President Park Geun-hye and government officials that peace required forgiveness, cooperation and mutual respect. He said diplomacy must be encouraged so that listening and dialogue replace "mutual recriminations, fruitless criticisms and displays of force."

The Argentine pope spoke in English, the first English speech of his pontificate. Usually he speaks in Italian or his native Spanish, but the Vatican said he would deliver at least four speeches in English on the trip to accommodate his Asian audiences.

North Korea's apparent test firing was conducted from Wonsan on its east coast and the initial three short-range projectiles flew about 220 kilometers (135 miles), according to a South Korean Defense Ministry official who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing office rules. It wasn't immediately clear what the projectiles were. After an initial three firings an hour before Francis arrived, North Korea followed up with two others a short time after he landed.

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Extension of truce in Gaza fans hope of progress in Israel-Hamas talks in Cairo

CAIRO (AP) — A five-day extension of a Gaza truce appeared to be holding despite a rocky start on Thursday, fanning cautious optimism of progress in the negotiations underway in Cairo between Israel and major Palestinian factions, including Hamas.

It's the longest cease-fire yet since the war broke out last month in the Gaza Strip. The fighting has so far killed more than 1,900 Palestinians, the majority of them civilians, according to Palestinian and U.N. officials. Israel has lost 67 people, all but three of them soldiers.

Violence briefly spiked as the extension of a previous, 72-hour truce was announced shortly before midnight on Wednesday. The extension is to last until midnight on Monday.

Israel's military said eight Hamas rockets were launched at Israel but that the firing stopped in the early hours of Thursday morning. Israel retaliated with airstrikes on rockets and rocket-launching sites in Gaza, the military said.

Gaza police said it recorded 17 Israeli strikes but that no casualties were reported.

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Couple together for 48 years at center of fight over North Carolina ban on same-sex marriage

HIGH POINT, N.C. (AP) — On the summer night Ellen Gerber and Pearl Berlin committed to spending their lives together, the No. 1 song was "When A Man Loves A Woman."

"We're still in love, after 48 years," Gerber, better known as Lennie, said recently. "We still can't begin the day without a good cuddle."

June 2, 1966, is engraved in Roman numerals on the identical gold bands the women exchanged during a religious wedding at their Greensboro synagogue last year on the anniversary of that long-ago night. They followed three months later with a civil ceremony in Maine.

The convoy of more than 200 vehicles had been parked at a military depot in the southern Russian city of Voronezh since late Tuesday amid disagreement over how and where the aid could be delivered to Ukraine, where government troops are battling pro-Russia separatists.

On Thursday the white trucks, some flying the red flag of Moscow city and accompanied by green military vehicles, traveled down a winding highway through sunflower fields and rolling green hills. They turned off that road near the city of Kamensk-Shakhtinsky, driving west toward the Ukraine border crossing of Izvaryne, which is currently under rebel control.

By taking such a route, Russian appeared to be intent on not abiding by a tentative agreement to deliver aid to a government-controlled border checkpoint in the Kharkiv region, where it could more easily be inspected by Ukraine and the Red Cross. Moscow has insisted it coordinated the dispatch of the goods, which it says range from baby food and canned meat to portable generators and sleeping bags, with the international Red Cross.

ICRC spokeswoman Anastasia Isyuk stressed Thursday that talks between the organization, Ukraine and Russia were continuing, but that she could not confirm where the Russian convoy was headed.

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It's a jungle out there: Parrot, chick, hogs and dogs have spots in political ads

WASHINGTON (AP) — It's a jungle out there in political television advertising, what with parrots, chicks, dogs and pigs taking turns in commercials that bite and scratch in a way no nonpartisan pet ever would.

"You can keep it," squawked a parrot in a Club for Growth Action ad that ran earlier in the year in Arkansas. It was meant to ridicule President Barack Obama and Sen. Mark Pryor's now-abandoned claims that state residents could keep their health insurance if they liked it.

In Georgia, Democratic Rep. John Barrow unleashed a golden retriever in the first television ad of his campaign for a new term. "Somebody once said if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog," he says.

"Well, I wouldn't wish Washington on a dog," Barrow adds, throwing a tennis ball to be fetched. By the time he has finished touting his own record and criticizing other lawmakers, the dog and ball are back. "She works harder than most of them do," he says, comparing the pet favorably to the men and women he has known in Congress for a decade.

Whether peddling candidates or commercial products, the goal of commercials is to gain as wide and attentive a viewership as possible. Anything that gets a longer look is prized.

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — At first, the operating room doctors thought the quiet man in jeans was a distressed family member. One shouted at him to leave as another fought to save the gunshot patient unconscious on the table.

The anesthesiologist was the first to see the man's gun. He dove to the ground, and then listened as dozens of shots rang out, thinking, "So this is how I die."

For years, hospitals were one of the few safe havens in this mind-bogglingly violent Latin American country.

No longer. The emergency room murder of a 27-year-old patient by the very gang member who allegedly put him there in the first place is one of a string of recent attacks and ugly confrontations that have shattered physicians' sense of security.

"It's a scandal, to kill someone inside a hospital. It's complete social deterioration," said Jose Manuel Olivares, an oncology resident at the University Hospital of Caracas, where Edinson Balsa was slain in June along with his brother, who was waiting in the hallway. "It was never perfect, but they used to respect some boundaries."

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Funeral services set for Kevin Ward, New York driver hit by Tony Stewart's car in upstate race

TURIN, N.Y. (AP) — Kevin Ward Jr.'s father and fellow racers want him remembered as a talented and aggressive driver who had a bright future in the sport rather than as a victim in an accident involving NASCSAR champion Tony Stewart that sparked controversy among racing fans and recriminations from Ward's family.

Funeral services for the 20-year-old were set for 11 a.m. Thursday at South Lewis Senior High School in Turin, 55 miles northeast of Syracuse. Ward, a 2012 graduate of the school, lived in nearby Port Leyden.

Ward was killed Saturday night 140 miles away at a dirt track in Canandaigua, where NASCAR champion Stewart was racing while he was in the area for a Sprint Cup event at Watkins Glen the next day. After a bump from Stewart sent Ward's winged car spinning into the wall, the young driver climbed out and stalked onto the track in his black firesuit, gesturing angrily. Stewart's No. 14 car seemed to fishtail, and Ward was thrown through the air as fans watched in horror.

The accident touched off angry debates as video of the crash circulated online, with fans questioning whether Stewart, known for his hot temper, tried to send his own message by buzzing Ward, or whether Ward recklessly took his life into his hands by stepping onto a dark track clad in black.

Kevin Ward Sr., who was at the track with his wife Pamela when their son was killed, told The Syracuse Post-Standard this week that Stewart was the best driver on the track that night, and there was no reason for him to hit the young driver after other cars avoided him.